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Another Way to Preserve Cucumbers

A method for preserving cucumbers by pickling them in a sugar and salt syrup with ginger, allspice, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Another Way to Preserve Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Weigh equal quantities of sugar and cucumbers.

  2. Split cucumbers down the middle and remove all seeds.

  3. Cover cucumbers with cold water mixed with salt and let them stand in a warm place for 3-4 days.

Make the syrup and pickle

  1. Boil sugar with enough water to dissolve it, skimming off any scum.

  2. Add cucumbers to the syrup and simmer until they are clear and green.

  3. For the last boiling, add ginger, allspice, and lemon peel.

  4. Transfer cucumbers to jars and cover completely with syrup.

Seal and store

  1. The next day, tie jars with bladder.

  2. Check in a week or ten days; if syrup is low, boil more and add when cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cucumber + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together501 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Provide the main body of the pickle, becoming clear and green as they absorb the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the pickle and, in a thick syrup, preserves the cucumbers.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the cucumbers and firms their texture before the syrup is added.
White ginger
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma and a touch of acidity to the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmering the cucumbers in the syrup. Simmering gently lets sugar slowly replace the water in the cucumbers, so they turn clear and firm. Boiling hard can split or soften them, and the syrup must be fully dissolved and clean of scum first so the preserve keeps well.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, allspice, lemon):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, allspice, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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